THE QUIRKINESS OF TARGET FIELD. About two thirds of the way into the 2010 season, it looks as if Target Field is quirky. I googled “Target Field quirkiness” and got 97,600 hits. I did the search after reading this article in USA Today Sports Weekly by Paul White with the headline “Twins are trying to adapt to Target Field’s quirkiness” (of course, the headline may have led to a lot of the hits.) The article deals with the difficulty that the Twins are having dealing with the quirks of the new ballpark even after over 50 home games. The article features the difficulties of playing a fly ball near the right field wall. There is an overhang which. If the ball misses the overhang, the fielder can catch the ball. If it hits it, it can’t. The extent of the overhang depends on where the ball hits, varying from two feet at the foul line to eight feet in center field. If the ball hits the wall, it will bounce in different directions, depending on where it hits because there are different surfaces. A ball may bounce off the limestone overhang, a concrete portion of the wall, a wood portion or padding. Mike Cuddyer, the Twins right fielder, says: “It’s definitely quirky. You have to deal with four different surfaces, and the ball bounces differently off each one.” Of course, it would take several years for a right fielder for an opposing team to have the experience with the wall that Cuddyer has at this point in the season. It’s a small sample, but the Twins have a home field advantage at this point that is about 120 points, which is greater than the 100 point advantage that they had last year.
Archive for the ‘Baseball’ Category
THE QUIRKINESS OF TARGET FIELD.
Monday, August 16th, 2010DESIGNING A QUIRKY STADIUM.
Sunday, August 15th, 2010DESIGNING A QUIRKY STADIUM. I posted here last fall about the Minnesota Twins moving out of the Metrodome, their old stadium, which was considered to provide the biggest home field advantage in baseball. This Sports Illustrated article by Sky Andrecheck, posted at the beginning of the 2010 season, said that “[M]any are wondering whether Target Field [the new Minnesota Twin stadium] can match the advantage that the Metrodome provided the Twins.” Andrecheck pointed out that there is always a home-field advantage in baseball and estimated that it on average an 80 point wing; that is, a .500 team ( a team that wins half its games) will win at a .540 rate at home and a .460 rate on the road. The Twins had a 100 point advantage over the 28-year history of the Metrodome, equal to an estimated additional 1.6 wins a year. Not that big a difference, but Andrecheck points out that it suggests that, except for the Metrodome, the Tigers rather than the Twins would have won the Central Division in 2009. Andrecheck’s research shows that three factors that enter into a park providing a home team advantage are having a dome, being a good doubles park, and being “quirky.” The Metrodome was “quirky” with spongy turf, the unusual “baggy” right field wall, and the white dome ceiling which made it hard to follow fly balls. Quirkiness helps the home team because as Andrecheck says, “The Metrodome’s unusual features helped the Twins at home because Minnesota’s players acclimated to the difficult roof conditions and bouncy turf.” What would the new Target stadium be like? Writing in April, Andrecheck thought that the stadium followed the “same formulaic pattern” of other modern stadiums and praised the Twins for not building “another odd park with bizarre features to give the home team a slight advantage.”
BREW ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE—REVISITED.
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010BREW ANOTHER POT OF COFFEE—REVISITED. I posted here two seasons ago about everybody involved in a major league game—the umpire, the players on both teams, the managers—losing track of the ball and strike count on a batter. It’s happened again. A batter was given a base on balls after only three balls in a Dodgers-Diamondbacks game. And it was only the second inning.
“THIS IS THE WAY OLD ‘CASEY’ STENGEL RAN….”
Friday, July 2nd, 2010“THIS IS THE WAY OLD ‘CASEY’ STENGEL RAN….” The Wall Street Journal had a squib today on the fact that Luke Scott took 35.7 seconds to round the bases on his home run the other night. (Scott strained his hamstring while jogging round the bases and had to walk part of the way). I was reminded of something my father used to recite at the dinner table. Casey Stengel was a favorite of ours as a manager, with people calling out to each other if he was giving an interview, but what my father recited was about an inside-the-park home run that Casey hit in the 1923 World Series. It was by Damon Runyon, who was covering the event as a sports writer. The full text is here. I don’t recall my father reciting anything close to the whole thing, but here is an excerpt from the New York Post which leaves out some of Runyon’s repetitionsand there fore some of the poetry: ““This is the way old Casey Stengel ran yesterday afternoon, running his home run home in a Giant victory by a score of 5 to 4 in the first game of the World Series of 1923. This is the way — his mouth wide open. His warped old legs bending beneath him at every strike. His arms flying back and forth like those of a man swimming with a crawl stroke. His flanks heaving, his breath whistling, his head far back . . .
“The warped old legs, twisted and bent by many a year of baseball campaigns just barely held out under Casey Stengel until he reached the plate, running his home run home. Then they collapsed.” My father would then add two facts. First, Stengel married his wife Edna the next year, and her parents were supposed to have opposed the marriage because they had read Damon Runyon and thought of Stengel as too old for their daughter.
Second, Stengel was 33 years old.
THE ONLY GOOD ARGUMENT AGAINST INSTANT REPLAY IN BASEBALL.
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010THE ONLY GOOD ARGUMENT AGAINST INSTANT REPLAY IN BASEBALL. I posted here about the bad call by an umpire which cost Armando Gallaraga a perfect game as yet another argument for more use of instant replay in baseball. If you don’t follow baseball closely, you should know that the umpire who made the call, Jim Joyce, was voted the best umpire in a poll of 100 major league players taken after the call. Of course, if the best umpire missed an important call, it is a dramatic argument for instant replay. Nevertheless, the poll contains a good argument against instant replay. The players don’t want it. In the poll 77% were opposed to using instant replay for calls at the bases.
“…AND THE GAME GOES ON FOREVER.”
Friday, June 25th, 2010“…AND THE GAME GOES ON FOREVER.” T. Coreghessan Boyle wrote “The Hector Quesadilla Story” about a major league baseball player named Hector Quesadilla. Hector is on the downward arc of his long career, hanging on as a pinch hitter/utility infielder. He has a 28-year-old son and is a grandfather. The baseball game in the story goes deep into extra innings and the story builds to the last phrase–a phrase I cherish: “…and the game goes on forever.”
WELL PLAYED.
Thursday, June 24th, 2010WELL PLAYED. The great Isner-Mahut match was played at a very high level. You couldn’t have had such a long match if that weren’t the case. If either player had lost form or made mistakes, the set would have ended quickly. The statistics show this. There were very few unforced errors and a high percentage of winners. Given this extraordinary play, I was irritated when the announcers, who were generally good, claimed that the players were not returning serve well. In fact, service returns were weak because the serves were so overpowering. The announcers acknowledged that Isner may have the best serve in the game today. Imagine the good servers of the past, and remember that Isner is six foot nine. The announcers quoted Andy Roddick to the effect that you can’t teach height. The criticisms of the return of serve reminded me of the joke that is often made about great baseball pitchers. “He’s just lucky. His whole career he’s pitched against teams that are in a slump.”
70 TO 68.
Thursday, June 24th, 201070 to 68. When a baseball game goes past about the 14th inning, it always seems to me that the intensity of the game increases. The players know as well as the fans that they are part of something special. Both John Isner and Nicolas Mahut knew that they were playing the greatest match of all time, that they were playing at a very high level, and that they were sustaining that high level for hour after hour. Yesterday I found myself attaching significance to the score as the SET approached 112 games because the announcers told us that the longest MATCH of all time was 112 games long. In the end, Isner won the set and the match in the 138th game.
DOMED STADIUMS AND PINBALL MACHINES.
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010DOMED STADIUMS AND PINBALL MACHINES. Kids, you may never have encountered Marshall McLuhan, but he was a very influential critic in the sixties. I always found him interesting. McLuhan was a professor of literature who became increasingly interested in the medium that a work of art used rather than the content of the work itself. The shorthand for this was “The medium is the message.” For example, he argued that the printing press changed society from an oral/aural culture to a predominantly visual one. And reading made people more individualistic. (This wikipedia article describes a number of his ideas.) McLuhan was prominent at the time that the first domed stadium, the Astrodome in Houston, opened. The Astrodome was controversial, and McLuhan was asked for his opinion. It would be, he thought, like being inside a pinball machine.
LOUD STADIUMS.
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010LOUD STADIUMS. The fans at the World Cup can be thankful that the stadiums are open air. In the United States, “domed” or roofed stadiums hold in the noise. Football fans take advantage of this by making lots of noise when the visiting team is calling signals so as to disrupt their timing. The fans of the Tampa Rays brandish cowbells in their domed stadium. Nick reports that the noise is horrendous.
